By the end of this year, six BlackBerry 10 smartphones are expected to be launched by BlackBerry (BBRY), formerly known as Research in Motion. Indeed, the competition in smartphone segment is going to reach at optimal level this year. Till date, a sequence of high-end smartphones, including HTC One, Sony Xperia Z/ZL, LG Optimus G Pro, iPhone 5 and more, are available in the market. And more importantly, Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola X Phone and Apple’s sixth generation iPhone are yet to make their global presence this year.
It’s really tough to predict this time whether BlackBerry 10 smartphones could succeed to make their stronghold among existing/upcoming high-end phones. Just few days before, you might have remembered that BlackBerry’s CEO–Thorsten Heins–told that Apple’s iOS platform became obsolete. He also told that Apple had failed to do much innovation with their iOS user interface since 2007.
Heins said, “History repeats itself again, I guess. The rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about, is now five years old.”
BlackBerry 10 Smartphones To Hold 5% Markets Share In 2016
Of course, many of us believe that the BlackBerry 10 OS wouldn’t have much impact on the smartphone industry over next few years. According to a new prediction by research firm Gartner, BlackBerry 10 smartphones would manage to hold less than 5% of the overall smartphone market share through 2016. Undoubtedly, the platform will have to compete with Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 to make stronger presence across the world.
As enterprises are more likely to deploy Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) support in coming years, we could see more opportunities for the Canadian mobile handset maker. BlackBerry (BBRY) could leverage on its ‘BlackBerry Enterprise Service’ and ‘BlackBerry Messenger’ to entice enterprise and corporate users. Definitely, before deploying BlackBerry 10 smartphones, enterprises would like to familiarize themselves with the device support. Besides, BlackBerry would have to educate enterprises and users how the BB10 platform is lucrative for them.
War Between Android And BlackBerry 10 smartphones
It’s really very difficult for BlackBerry 10 smartphones to dwindle the halo effect of Android and iOS or even Windows Phone powered smartphones. However, businesses are still waiting to see how BlackBerry 10 smartphones really work out in the consumer market, which is more likely to determine the long-term existence of the platform.
Previously, IDC predicted that BlackBerry could hold 5.9% of smartphone market share by the end of 2016. Furthermore, the smartphone market shares of Android and iOS would be dropped to 52.9% and 19.0% in 2016, from 61.0% and 20.5% in 2012 respectively. More importantly, BlackBerry is expected to ship 20 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones this year.
